FBI, DHS release report on Russia hacking

[Meh Gerbil]

Apparently DHS themselves are also into hacking US election sources. They seem to be basing this on the methods used. My point was that wouldn't DHS, for example, when they hack US sources, use the same methods Russia uses when they hack because those are the effective methods one would use when hacking successfully? Or perhaps because of my lack of knowledge in how to actually hack, there are a variety of different ways to hack that would accurately distinguish certain hackers from the other?

.. and this is why you shouldn't watch the news.

You have, as a rank amateur, managed to outthink the tremendous herd of nit-wit zombies known collectively as 'The Press'.
They won't ask the tough questions, they won't investigate any of this, they won't pin down a politician on anything of substance.

You are absolutely correct that any number of agents could have used 'Russian Tactics' to hack those servers.
Unfortunately, because the administration is more interested in scuttling Trump's term than actually approaching the truth we have to put up with tons of misinformation.

Everyone recognizes that the red scare tactic is a old play (popular from 1918 - 1988) but the democrats are a bit off their game that racist/sexist/homophobe triumvirate didn't work.
They need some new names to call people - and they need them fast.

[Jaecp]

Moderated By: Bill the Cat

Then you must ban Jim for post 21, or you will lose the ability to ban others from this thread completely. This is an official demand.

***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publicly complain or whine, please take it to the Padded Room unless told otherwise.

You are free to PM me and we can talk about this. I wanted to do it the first time, but... you know. I did already send a PM to one mod, maybe we can talk things out with words instead of having a pissing contest in what I hoped was going to be a productive discussion thread

In the meantime, Jim, as you are clearly attempting to participate in the thread based on the other two posts in that cluster and I do not know what definition of Spam Bill is using here, don't do what you did in post 21 going forward.

[seanD]

.. and this is why you shouldn't watch the news.

You have, as a rank amateur, managed to outthink the tremendous herd of nit-wit zombies known collectively as 'The Press'.
They won't ask the tough questions, they won't investigate any of this, they won't pin down a politician on anything of substance.

You are absolutely correct that any number of agents could have used 'Russian Tactics' to hack those servers.
Unfortunately, because the administration is more interested in scuttling Trump's term than actually approaching the truth we have to put up with tons of misinformation.

Everyone recognizes that the red scare tactic is a old play (popular from 1918 - 1988) but the democrats are a bit off their game that racist/sexist/homophobe triumvirate didn't work.
They need some new names to call people - and they need them fast.

I was just making sure I wasn't the only one looking at it wrong. I expect MSM to run with this, and I even expect the masses of idiots out there to buy into it. I definitely expect people like JimL to buy into it. I also expect political pundits to propagate it for partisan reasons. Though I'm not sure why federal government agencies are buying into it so easily. And I sort of didn't expect people like Jaecp to buy into it and to try and propagate it like this so easily at tweb.

[JimL]

.. and this is why you shouldn't watch the news.

You have, as a rank amateur, managed to outthink the tremendous herd of nit-wit zombies known collectively as 'The Press'.
They won't ask the tough questions, they won't investigate any of this, they won't pin down a politician on anything of substance.

You are absolutely correct that any number of agents could have used 'Russian Tactics' to hack those servers.
Unfortunately, because the administration is more interested in scuttling Trump's term than actually approaching the truth we have to put up with tons of misinformation.

Everyone recognizes that the red scare tactic is a old play (popular from 1918 - 1988) but the democrats are a bit off their game that racist/sexist/homophobe triumvirate didn't work.
They need some new names to call people - and they need them fast.

And that is exactly what authoritarians want you to think, not to mention what Trump has been pushing for quite some time, that its the journalist who are lying to you and feeding you misinformation. Anybody could have done the hacking, true, but according to the intelligence agencies, and I trust them more than I do your ridiculous opinion, it was the Russians, and the administration is pretty certain of that fact or the President wouldn't be taking such harsh retaliatory measures.

[Meh Gerbil]

And that is exactly what authoritarians want you to think, not to mention what Trump has been pushing for quite some time, that its the journalist who are lying to you and feeding you misinformation. Anybody could have done the hacking, true, but according to the intelligence agencies, and I trust them more than I do your ridiculous opinion, it was the Russians, and the administration is pretty certain of that fact or the President wouldn't be taking such harsh retaliatory measures.

Nobody here believes you're interested in the integrity of US elections because you sweep aside proof of tampering by the media and the DNC while chasing after *possible* connections of an email hack with the Russian government.

It is fine that you want to be a Kool-Aid drinking partisan.
Just don't expect it to come across as credible.

[JimL]

You are free to PM me and we can talk about this. I wanted to do it the first time, but... you know. I did already send a PM to one mod, maybe we can talk things out with words instead of having a pissing contest in what I hoped was going to be a productive discussion thread

In the meantime, Jim, as you are clearly attempting to participate in the thread based on the other two posts in that cluster and I do not know what definition of Spam Bill is using here, don't do what you did in post 21 going forward.

Okay, no offense taken either way. I can understand if you decided to ban me if I violated the rule you put in place, but if I did so it was in reaction to DE who violated the rule himself. But I think Btc is right, you should either ban me, as well as DE, but if you decide not to then I think it only fair that you should re-open it to CP and anyone else that violated the rule as well. Just a suggestion.

[Jaecp]

It's called 'spying'.
Are people surprised this happens?

Here is a fun fact for you to consider: Because people are constantly trying to hack our computers where I work nobody ever considers going after the hackers to be feasible. The onus is on our security team to keep the data secure and they can lose their jobs if they fail. That is the reality of the fall out of hacking for everyone except, apparently, the Democratic Party. It no way is it a viable defense for us in the private/semi-private sector to blame the hackers when they get our data.

So yeah, what the Russians did was wrong but short of war there is no way to stop them other than the Democrats deciding to take cyber security seriously.
No matter what, it has to start there.

The short answer its not just the spying because you're right, everyone does this and if it was just that we wouldn't be talking about it. It's that Russia hacked the DNC, the RNC and many campaigns and then selectively releasing the information in a strategic fashion with the goal being, initially, to disrupt our election and then shifted after the RNC convention to getting Trump in the white house. Response was slow largely because, as this has never happened before, senior officials weren't sure how to respond and there was a lot of gridlock, essentially, because of the potentially politicized nature of this.

So you're upset that our elections aren't being manipulated in the usual way, for example, by large donations to a family run slush fund posing as a charity?

^--- I typed that for my own amusement.

Back to your topic, I don't quite follow where you're going with your line of reasoning.
I assume you're trying to somehow delegitimize Trump's presidency.
The reason that doesn't work so well with me is because I'm left wondering: "How is there stuff on the DNC servers that make them out to be unethical dorks?"

If a hacker revealed to my wife that there was porno on my laptop the wife wouldn't be angry with the hacker.

So your point that 'Russia released this information in a strategic fashion' may very well be true but I'm left wondering 'Why wouldn't they?'
The New York Times digs up dirt on people and releases it strategically.
The DNC digs up dirt on people and releases it strategically.
The RNC digs up dirt on people and releases it strategically.

I don't know why strategically makes it bad.

I've no particular need to de-legitimize Trump's presidency.

As for your question,

The NYT, DNC and RNC are all American organization. Domestic politics is how we use our rights and freedoms to choose our countries direction. As such, those 3 org's you listed are well within their rights, and in some sense their civic duty, to make their case --whatever it happen to be-- as that is our system.

Russia though? Through cutouts and proxies? That's an act of war man. In your analogy, the hacker has found porn, potentially planted it, on many many peoples laptops. Then, at a time designed to benefit the hacker, releases a little bit of the porn every day so that the news cycle, for a solid month, is nothing but the porn on your laptop. The stories rarely show any of the porn, but juicy tidbits in the titles get everyone going even if the actual porn was softcore and not a big deal (metaphors are hard). Russia isn't America. Their government kills journalists, assassinates their political opposition. They weren't doing us a favor. They were actively attempt to subvert our election with, among other things, a disinformation campaign.

It is my understanding that the Russian mob is big into computer hacking.
That would give it a Russian tactics flavor without it being an official government action.

We don't have all the data yet but JimL wants to nuke Moscow.

It's not about the tactics, but some sort of technical stuff that I'm not qualified to talk about regarding how our government tracks IP addresses and other stuff. Likewise, this operation doesn't fit the Russian Mob's style. That it was Fancy and Cozy Bear (APT28/29) has been known for months, crowdstrike and threatconnect have articles up about the DNC hacks from back in June or July.

Nobody here believes you're interested in the integrity of US elections because you sweep aside proof of tampering by the media and the DNC while chasing after *possible* connections of an email hack with the Russian government.

It is fine that you want to be a Kool-Aid drinking partisan.
Just don't expect it to come across as credible.

Possible? Our elected officials that have access to all the information are freaking out about this and we've known it was Russia since October. The only question has been the details.

Okay, no offense taken either way. I can understand if you decided to ban me, I violated the rule you put in place, but I did so in reaction to DE who violated the rule himself. But I think Btc is right, you should either ban me, as well as DE, but if you decide not to then I think it only fair that you should re-open it to CP and anyone else that violated the rule as well. Just a suggestion.

Jim, they were off topic. You are being accused of spamming. Until a mod, via PM, talks to me about why they think what you posted was spam then you are free to post in this thread as you are clearly having a conversation with Meh Gerbil that is on topic.

[seanD]

It's not about the tactics, but some sort of technical stuff that I'm not qualified to talk about regarding how our government tracks IP addresses and other stuff. Likewise, this operation doesn't fit the Russian Mob's style. That it was Fancy and Cozy Bear (APT28/29) has been known for months, crowdstrike and threatconnect have articles up about the DNC hacks from back in June or July.

But this is the evidence that people (at least those not drinking the partisan koolaide) want to know -- the "technical stuff" that actually links Russia to the hacking source -- but evidence the government is apparently not providing, including the article you linked in your OP. They explain how the hacking was done, which is cool I guess, especially for people that want to know how to hack, but they don't explain why it links specifically to Russia other than they used hacking tactics Russia used in the past (though that too wasn't in the article you linked, but a separate link).

[Meh Gerbil]

Possible? Our elected officials that have access to all the information are freaking out about this and we've known it was Russia since October. The only question has been the details.

Thanks for your responses on the other points.

I doubt the US can pin this on Russia for the following reasons:
1: You cannot go by IP address because any group of hackers working for any government can hack from anywhere in the world. (The Greeks could have hacked the DNC from Australia)
2: You cannot go by tools used because those tools are available to hackers everywhere.

So no, I don't accept that they can pin this on Russia - the whole reason Russia is a part of the equation is because Trump referenced them as a joke.
I've seen no evidence beyond his tongue and cheek joke.
The rest has been pretty far-fetched conjecture.

[Jaecp]

But this is the evidence that people (at least those not drinking the partisan koolaide) want to know -- the "technical stuff" that actually links Russia to the hacking source -- but evidence the government is apparently not providing, including the article you linked in your OP. They explain how the hacking was done, which is cool I guess, especially for people that want to know how to hack, but they don't explain why it links specifically to Russia other than they used hacking tactics Russia used in the past (though that too wasn't in the article you linked, but a separate link).

This isn't partisan in our actual government. The senate, at least, is in alignment on this.

As for the technical, page 5 looks to have most of that and there is some tertiary file, "IOCs associated with RIS cyber actors are provided within the accompanying .csv and .stix files
of JAR-16-20296." that contains some list of ip addresses that are commonly used by these groups to keep a watch out for. I don't know how to parse a Yara, im not a programmer. Also, none of this tells you how to hack. It says what they've done, but replicating that based on this report is....

[Meh Gerbil]

This isn't partisan in our actual government. The senate, at least, is in alignment on this.

I'll allow that you may be right here.
However, I'm skeptical because the Senate, which is 99% globalist, is united against a Trump presidency.
They don't like the house cleaning he might be able to effect with the help of a populist uprising.

[Jaecp]

Thanks for your responses on the other points.

I doubt the US can pin this on Russia for the following reasons:
1: You cannot go by IP address because any group of hackers working for any government can hack from anywhere in the world. (The Greeks could have hacked the DNC from Australia)
2: You cannot go by tools used because those tools are available to hackers everywhere.

So no, I don't accept that they can pin this on Russia - the whole reason Russia is a part of the equation is because Trump referenced them as a joke.
I've seen no evidence beyond his tongue and cheek joke.
The rest has been pretty far-fetched conjecture.

I take it, then, that you have no significant objections to the rest of what I said?

As for pinning it on Russia, again not a computer science type, but there is a lot more I've seen referenced than simply IP addresses and the tools. The Yara thing on page 5 is one of them I had thought. The way its been explained to me has been someone similar to reading body language. You don't look for a single thing like an IP address, but a whole cluster of activity. Crowdstrike has a blog post about it that you might find interesting. Literally old news, but it does give you some context on how cybersecurity experts think and how wide ranging these activities are and it is additionally valuable because this was written by a the company's CTO long before the disinformation campaign and Trumps victory politicized this. From Alperovitch's perspective, he's just writing down what happened and not engaging in anything partisan. Scroll down and you'll start seeing a bunch of technical stuff that I have no particular way to parse.

Cheers

[Meh Gerbil]

I take it, then, that you have no significant objections to the rest of what I said?

As for pinning it on Russia, again not a computer science type, but there is a lot more I've seen referenced than simply IP addresses and the tools. The Yara thing on page 5 is one of them I had thought. The way its been explained to me has been someone similar to reading body language. You don't look for a single thing like an IP address, but a whole cluster of activity. Crowdstrike has a blog post about it that you might find interesting. Literally old news, but it does give you some context on how cybersecurity experts think and how wide ranging these activities are and it is additionally valuable because this was written by a the company's CTO long before the disinformation campaign and Trumps victory politicized this. From Alperovitch's perspective, he's just writing down what happened and not engaging in anything partisan. Scroll down and you'll start seeing a bunch of technical stuff that I have no particular way to parse.

Cheers

I have to allow that it is a possibility.
I think our response to this should be tempered by the fact the USA does the exact same thing.

[JimL]

Thanks for your responses on the other points.

I doubt the US can pin this on Russia for the following reasons:
1: You cannot go by IP address because any group of hackers working for any government can hack from anywhere in the world. (The Greeks could have hacked the DNC from Australia)
2: You cannot go by tools used because those tools are available to hackers everywhere.

So no, I don't accept that they can pin this on Russia - the whole reason Russia is a part of the equation is because Trump referenced them as a joke.
I've seen no evidence beyond his tongue and cheek joke.
The rest has been pretty far-fetched conjecture.

Who should we trust on this MG, you, or the government intelligence agencies? So now you don't trust the press or the intelligence agencies, but you trust Trump, a guy that lies just about every time he opens his mouth. Great, its no wonder this country is in such political turmoil at this time.

[Jaecp]

I have to allow that it is a possibility.
I think our response to this should be tempered by the fact the USA does the exact same thing.

Is it the exact same thing? Everyone hacks. Nobody does what Russia did here. The Scope and Scale are literally unprecedented. If this was just a hack then we wouldn't be talking about this as the primary reason that governments hack each other is to know what the other side is planning so they know how to maneuver best. What Russia did here is the same kind of thing they've been doing in Eastern Europe, but at a much larger scale. Specifically, a disinformation campaign. Only reason I'm even still talking about the evidence for the hacks is because this website is pretty right wing and while your congressional leadership scrambles to figure out how best to smack Russia in the nose so they stop screwing with us (see Elam's sanctions thread) the people here still aren't sure, heh.